Shepherdstown doesn’t have a traffic light. There are a couple outside of town, but none in Shepherdstown itself. When we moved here from Northern Virginia, there were traffic lights everywhere and any time you went any where, you had to factor in the amount of time you’d be waiting at traffic lights.
When the town I grew up in (Maysville) was thriving, it was almost a big as Shepherdstown, and they actually installed a traffic light. It was only there for a few months — the residents just couldn’t handle all the new technology and the hassle of only being able to go when some light said it was ok. The light in Maysville only had red and green lights. It hung in the middle of the only “busy” intersection in town and had two bulbs. When the top bulb was lit the light showed red in two directions and green in two directions. When the light “changed” the other bulb on the bottom came on and then the red and green directions were reversed. There was no warning — it just changed.
The invention of the traffic signal is attributed to Lester Wire, a Detroit policeman in 1912. His light was a two-color, red-and-green light with a buzzer to warn pedestrians ahead of the impending transition. Apparently Maysville had one of Lester Wire’s lights — but without the buzzer. Wire’s basic design was modified by another policeman, Williams Potts, to include the three colors (red, amber and green) used in lights today.
Of course Maysville never could get past the two colors — goodness knows how they would have reacted to a traffic light with three colors….
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